Night Shots: Overexpose & Pull, or Normal Exposure and Push?

[gabriel_benaim]

Hello,

 

I'm interested in trying some night photography in b&w, and have

found different approaches to it. Namely, pushing underexposed film

or pulling overexposed film. I imagine that the tradeoffs have to do

with contrast vs. detail in dark areas, but would appreciate detailed

suggestions based on experience. I was thinking of using my usual

combo of tx in hc-110, but would welcome any advice. I'm shooting

120 film in a tlr w tripod, mostly stationary landscape, maybe some

cars and traffic lights. Thanks for the help,

 

GB

[patrick_ingram]

I would certainly suggest overexposing and pulling. Generally night scenes involve increased contrast (unless you're doing landscape outside the city, but your reference to lights suggests you might not be), and cutting this down helps a lot. Pushing film will just get you the lights with little else. I don't have any specific recommendations for that combo, but when I used HP5+ and D-76 well after dark to do some city shots I essentially exposed for some arbitrary length of time (about 6 mins) and then cut the suggested dev time by 50%. This was suggested by a friend of mine and worked fairly well. This friend also suggested that I shoot around an hour before sunrise to lessen contrast but keep the night look. I thanked him politely and then went out and shot about an hour after sunset. I'm not crazy :)

[eduardo_benavidez1]

Gilbert Fastenaekens is a belgian photographer who make great night shots. He spoke about his technical "secrets" of exposing and developing for this purpose in Camera & Darkroom mag issue of november 1995. I do have scans of this article for you all if you want it. Eduardo.

[dave_t]

What effect are you trying to achieve? Things are so contrasty at night that I don't know why you'd want to push, but maybe you want that look. I like APX100 in dilute Rodinal for this, but if you like TX in HC110, it might not be to your taste.

[lex_jenkins]

The best approach to nighttime photography for a *tripod-mounted* camera involves neither pushing nor pulling film. Save the push processing for either handheld photography in dim lighting or for special effects. Similarly, don't think in terms of pulling film either until you've first tried *properly* exposing film for the conditions.

 

The most relevant factor is reciprocity failure. Conquer that demon in order to get the best exposure on film and you need only develop the film normally. The only difference in developing compared with normal available light photography is that you might wish to try a compensating developer to tame the extreme contrast that often accompanies night photography. (BTW, extreme contrast is not an inevitable consequence of nighttime photography - a scene illuminated only by a full moon is actually quite softly lit.)

 

Here's an excellent reference for evaluating available light (it might be more appropriate to say "available dark") under various conditions:

 

http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

 

Keep in mind that Mr. Parker's otherwise invaluable tables do not account for reciprocity failure. That's something you'll need to determine for yourself, based on data from the film manufacturer and your own experience. In my experience Tri-X (TX) requires greater compensation that, say, T-Max 400 (TMY) to counter the effects of reciprocity failure. Others using more scientific methods have observed the same fact. However Tri-X is a longtime favorite for all kinds of photography, including extended night exposures, so don't feel compelled to change based on anyone else's tests or observations unless you feel you've exhausted the possibilities of the film.

[tim_curry]

Gabriel,

 

This is my method for working out night shots. If possible, get the same film in a 35mm version and do a roll using various exposures and times. 35 exposures will give you a lot of information. I use f11 in 35mm as a baseline and vary times from 10 seconds out to 6 minutes or so, depends on the lighting. Try to stay in some sort of sequence where you have full stop increments between shots.

 

In any event, if you take good notes for that one roll, you will have a very valuable amount of shot data with a simple contact sheet of that roll. I use PMK for developer, so it deals with highlights fairly well. Use normal development for your personal e.i. and you will end up with a feel for the various light conditions. Print a shot or two to see about highlights and blocking, but this one test roll will certainly get you close and give you a very good idea about times in varying light conditions. With good notes (please take the best ones you can about light sources and distances or intensities, ie. street lamp @ 50', headlights at one block, building lighting @ 300' etc.) you will see what is best and be able to build on existing shots to fine tune exposures very rapidly.

 

Once the contact sheet is done, look at values and make a few more notes on what worked well and what to try in a similar shot next time. You will still end up bracketing around a "favorite" exposure for given conditions, but you should have some very good shots after the first roll is looked at and evaluated. Works for me.

[michael_chini]

The very simple answer is to overexpose and underdevelop. Unfortunately, this presents problems, for as you overexpose very bright streetlights to get the shadow's on your neg, you get greater flare and blocked highlights. My solution, is to use the minimal agitation method. My developing and exposure times are my own so they might not work for you. You'll have to find what works for you. When I develop, having well-exposed negatives, I agitate for the entire first minute (120 and 35mm), I then agitate again at minutes 2 and 3. Then, my next agitations come at 6 and 9 minutes. The longer times between agitation, prevent the highlights from blocking up while the 1st 3 agitations give me sufficient shadow contrast and detail. I tried with every 3rd minute throughout and got very flat shadows. I'm always improving my technique but this works perfectly for me.

 

Start with stationary landscapes in 'average' lighting and shoot at around f8 for about 45 sec. with Tri-X. Hp5 is a bit faster. The T-Max and Delta films are even better than that. And bracket to get your own exposure times...

[nico_.]

The easiest way for that kind of shots is to use C41 film. I took some night shots a while ago with XP2 and T400CN and intended to expose it at ISO200. It turned out later that my light meter was underexposing by 2-3 stops (light measured under a street lamp with incident reading). The negatives were a bit dense but not only was there detail in deep shadows you could also see the light bulbs in the street lamps! Quite amazing. Getting all the information to paper is a different story though. As to be expected with C41 film, the extreme overexposure had one more disadvantage: contrast and sharpness were significant lower in brightly lit parts of the negatives, say 1-3 metre vicinity around lamps. Not noticable if the lights are not prominent in your composition but very much so eg. on a brightly colored wall with a lamp mounted to it and your picture shows the close vicinity of the lamp. Next time I will try half or a quarter of the exposure I used then (2min@f16).

 

You can also forget about reprocity failure. Kodak claims that there is no exposure compensation necessary for T400CN up to 120 seconds!!!

[d._diehl]

I try to overexpose, and now use a water bath development with TMAX developer;

(One minute in dev., slight agitation, one minute in water, no agitation, completed

when film has been in dev. for a total of five minutes). Gives good results with the

"street light and deep shadow" shots. I tried a dilute HC 110 B formula, that also

worked very well. Trick is low agitation, dilute developers, and for ME overexposing

my film a bit (TMAX 100).

 

Good luck

 

David<div></div>